In the worst news of 2024, Stemson Therapeutics closed its doors a few weeks ago. This was announced by its CEO, Geoff Hamilton, in response to an email by someone reporting on the Hair Loss Cure 2020 website.
It seems that they ran out of money and couldn’t find new funding from one of the venture capital firms that had been funding their research. According to Hamilton, they were about a year away from doing clinical trials, but the VC firms no longer had any enthusiasm for the repeated delays.
Probably this has to do with a change in the calculus of biotechnology VC firms. They’re most interested in long-term return on investment, and see more promising technologies in the form of topicals and other pharmaceuticals, instead of cell-based therapies. It looks like maybe drug development has finally overtaken cell-based therapies in terms of potential efficacy in the field of hair regeneration research.
The existing companies still involved in cell-based hair regeneration are Dr. Tsuji and Replicel in Japan (Replicel has actually launched its therapy on the market, but only in Japan)… and in the US, dNovo is still apparently active but has posted no recent updates on its website so there is no news about the status of their research.
The Stemson news is terrible and I think really signals a major setback in cell-based hair regeneration technology.